Over the last several years, the world has become ever more increasingly connected. These connections may occur at the physical level with internetworked computing devices, which form private networks or public networks, such as the Internet.
Connections also occur at other levels. Using networked computing devices, people, governments, non-profits, organizations, and businesses form connections between and among these various groups for myriad reasons. For example, social networks can be formed that link individuals and entities through a social network application. Or, business entities may be interconnected to provide services, such as business or financial services.
As the connectivity grows, more and more interactions occur at a distance and over a network. Sometimes the interacting entities know each other; however, as both the number and sizes of networks grow, it is becoming more common that interactions occur between entities that do not know each other or have not previously interacted.
There are several issues when entities that are not well known to each other interact. One such issue with network interactions is uncertainty about an entity's reputation, such as its trustworthiness or creditworthiness. For example, Entity A may not want to interact with Entity B via a networked service, be it joining the same user group, buying a product, selling a product, being linked as acquaintances, or the like, without first having some sense of the trustworthiness of Entity B. However, gauging an entity's reputation is very difficult. Self-reporting cannot be relied upon because a bad entity may misrepresent their reputation. Third-party verification services can sometimes be used to help understand an entity's reputation, but services often have limited metrics and insights. The information provided by third-party service providers may also be dubious as they too may have been deceived, may have relied upon incorrect data, or may have generated their data based upon incorrect assumptions.
Accordingly, what is needed are improved systems and methods for gauging one or more metrics about one or more properties about an entity (e.g., the entity's reputation) that is based, at least in part, on associations of the entity with other entities in one or more networks.